The present disclosure relates to an image processing apparatus, method, and program, and more particularly, to an image processing apparatus, method, and a program capable of quantitatively evaluating cooperativity of the motion of a subject to be evaluated non-invasively.
In the field of regeneration medicine, the regeneration of cells, tissues, organs, or the like of a body lost due to accident or disease or recovery of the functions thereof are contrived using cultivated cells produced by cultivating cells. There are diverse cell tissues which can be produced as such cultivated cells. Among the cell tissues, cardiac muscle cells are used for treatment of the heart. The cultivated cardiac muscle cells themselves move in accordance with pulsation. Thus, in a step of producing the cultivated cardiac muscle cells, for example, the quality of the cultivated cardiac muscle cells has to be evaluated to decide whether the motion of the cultivated cardiac muscle is satisfactory.
When the quality of the cultivated cardiac muscle cells is evaluated, for example, the current status of the cultivated cardiac muscle cells is observed visually. Further, the quality of the cultivated cardiac muscle cells is evaluated by pricking the cultivated cardiac muscle cells with electrodes and measuring the potential thereof. However, in the visual examination, the subjective view of an examiner may reflect on the evaluation result, and thus it is difficult to accurately obtain evaluation results objectively. When the potential of the cultivated cardiac muscle cells is measured, a problem may arise in that the cultivated cardiac muscle cells have to come into contact with the electrodes and thus the evaluation is not performed non-invasively. Further, information quantified based on the potential measurement is limited to, for example, pulsation time. Furthermore, the measurement subject is limited to a subject measurable with an electrode.
Accordingly, a configuration is disclosed in which measurement points are set in an imaged picture obtained by imaging cardiac muscle cells, the luminances of the measurement points are automatically measured, and the deformation period of the cardiac muscle cells is measured from the measurement values (for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 63-233392 (FIG. 1)).